The Cruel Stars of the Night Read Online Free Page A

quite honest I don’t really know what it is. Something with medical technology. Or that’s what it was before.”
    “Is he married?”
    “Divorced. Mona-Lisa, his wife, was . . . well, she got tired of him.”
    “Grandchildren?”
    Dorotea shook her head.
    “She had a child later. Afterward, I mean, long after. I think she is doing well.”
    “Do you like her?”
    “I have nothing against Mona-Lisa,” Dorotea said.
    “If we might return to Petrus. When did he usually go to bed?”
    “After the nine o’clock news, sometimes he sat up later if there was a good movie on. He liked movies.”
    “Did you see him yesterday?”
    “We didn’t chat or anything, but I saw him as usual. He usually brought in wood in the evenings. Before, when he had a cat then . . . well,you know. He really loved the cat. A little black one with white paws. She disappeared.”
    “So you saw him fetch firewood last night?”
    “No, I don’t think so. I must have sat here,” Dorotea said thoughtfully, “with the crossword puzzle. And then I wrote the grocery list. Petrus was going to look in on me today. He did some shopping for me. There’s always something you need.”
    Beatrice nodded and scrutinized Dorotea.
    “You are the first Dorotea I’ve met.”
    “Is that so? Beautiful it’s not, but you get used to it. The worst was when they called me Dorran, but that was a long time ago.”
    “Did you think it was strange when you didn’t see Petrus last night?”
    “No, not really. I saw that his lights were on. Then when I got up this morning I saw that the lights were still on, and that the gate was open. I mean the big gate. At first I thought an ambulance must have been here. Petrus always kept it closed. And then the door to the old barn was open.”
    “You were up early.”
    “It’s my bladder,” Dorotea said.
    “You didn’t see a car here last night?”
    “No, I would have noticed something like that,” she said firmly.
    Beatrice looked down at her notes, a couple of lines, a few names, not much more. Just as she was about to end the conversation her cell phone rang. She saw that it was Ann and answered immediately.
    She listened and then turned off the phone without having said a word. Dorotea looked at her with curiosity.
    “I’ve just been informed that Petrus wrote a good-bye letter.”
    “A good-bye letter, what do you mean?”
    “He was planning to take his own life,” Beatrice said.
    Dorotea stared at her.
    “That’s impossible,” she said finally. “Petrus would never do anything like that.”
    “My colleagues believe he wrote the letter,” Beatrice said. “I’m sorry.”
    “So you mean to say—”
    “—that Petrus had made up his mind to commit suicide. Yes, that’s how it appears.”
    “The poor man. If only I had known.”
    “It was nothing that you thought might happen?” “Never! He was a little down sometimes but not in that way.” “I’m very sorry,” Beatrice repeated and Dorotea looked at her as if she took her words to heart.
    After a few additional minutes of conversation Beatrice Andersson left the house. At the gate she turned and waved. She couldn’t see her but assumed Dorotea was standing at the window.
    It’s strange, she thought, that in Dorotea’s eyes it would have been better if her neighbor had been killed without the complicating factor that he had already decided to commit suicide. On top of the tragic news that Petrus Blomgren was dead she now had to bear this extra burden, the knowledge that he was tired of life and perhaps above all that on his final evening he had not sought her support.
    Lindell, Nilsson, Haver, and Andersson were standing in the yard. Lindell took the fact that she could hear the technicians talking as a sign that they were wrapping up their work in the barn. In her experience the forensics team often worked in silence.
    “It’s strange,” she said, “how a place changes after something like this happens.”
    Perhaps this did